


'Cause you started something

by Philipa_Moss



Category: History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Coming Out, Demisexuality, Friendship, Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Yearning, eating disorder mention, mix tapes, queer solidarity, sexuality crisis in progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: On a blustery Wednesday in March in his third year at Oxford, the lesbians found Scripps. Later, telling the story, he is tempted to say that he found them, because finding them was akin to finding God for the first time. This wasn’t blasphemy because—and this part Scripps never tells anyone—it was the lesbians who finished what God set in motion.
Relationships: David Posner/Donald Scripps
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	'Cause you started something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aneelin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aneelin/gifts).



> Title from Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want to Be With You."

On a blustery Wednesday in March in his third year at Oxford, the lesbians found Scripps. Later, telling the story, he is tempted to say that he found them, because finding them was akin to finding God for the first time. This wasn’t blasphemy because—and this part Scripps never tells anyone—it was the lesbians who finished what God set in motion.

But it was more accurate to say that the lesbians found Scripps because he was the one stationary on his bicycle, one foot on the pedal, the other on the ground on the edge of Christ Church Meadow, when someone called out to him. “Hey!”

He turned, and found himself face to face with a group of women. If he jumped slightly, it was only because they were standing so close. That or the aggressively and artfully shredded magenta pullover on the foremost woman. She was also wearing heavy boots.

“Hello,” said Scripps, finding his voice, which sounded as though it hadn’t been used in days.

“Didn’t you hear us calling?” magenta pullover asked.

At her elbow, a small blonde woman with a ring through her nose piped up, “You’ve been standing there for hours.”

An Asian woman with gently feathered hair rolled her eyes. “Not hours.”

“A long time then,” the blonde continued. “And it’s going to rain.”

“You’re in my tutorial,” said a voice at the back, and the others moved to reveal a woman with her curly red hair held back in a turquoise bandana. “Renaissance poetry. Donald Scripps, right?”

“Right,” said Scripps.

“Are you all right?”

As though on cue, a soft rumble sounded in the distance. Scripps, ill prepared for rain, adjusted his foot on the pedal.

“Come with us,” said magenta pullover.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Scripps, already beginning to ease away, “but there’s no need. I’ve only got a lot on my mind and—”

Another rumble, closer. The blonde woman jumped.

“Nonsense,” said magenta pullover. “We’ll have tea.”

And as though pulled by a perfectly complementary magnet, Scripps followed.

The teashop was warm and full of people sheltering from the rain, but a table seemed to materialize as soon as they arrived. The woman with feathered hair pushed Scripps into a seat. The others piled in around them and soon there were introductions over tea. Magenta pullover was Rachel, the blonde with the nose ring was Aggie, the Asian woman with feathered hair was Pritha, and Scripps’ classmate, he was pleased to remember before he had to introduce herself, was Diana.

To Scripps’ relief, the women seemed perfectly content to pick up whatever conversation he had interrupted with his vacant presence in the field. He wasn’t able to follow, but it didn’t much matter. He drank his tea and let the sound wash over him. It was almost like listening to Dakin and Timms scoring on each other with increasingly implausible stories. Or Dakin and Posner arguing about whatever poem Hector had set for them that week.

“We lost him again.”

Scripps blinked. Rachel, Aggie, Pritha, and Diana were all watching him closely.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just—”

“A lot on your mind,” said Rachel. “You said.”

“You can talk about it,” said Aggie. “We’re really good at solving problems.”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Pritha. “We’re just being nosy bitches.”

Something must have registered in Scripps’ face at that, because Pritha leaned in. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ve reclaimed it.”

She smelled like Yardley soap, like his gran. It was this more than anything that made Scripps open his mouth and say, “My best friend left. Left Oxford, I mean.”

“He got sent down?” Aggie asked. Her bangs were starting to frizz in the heat of the teashop.

“No,” said Scripps. “He just left. He…”

“Well, never mind,” said Pritha, clearly offering him an out.

Scripps forced himself to smile. “No, it’s all right. I just wasn’t sure what to call—I suppose he had a nervous breakdown. He had to get away.”

Rachel poured more tea into his mug.

Most people, when they heard about Posner, just shrugged. Even his friends. Even their friends. They said, “But were you really surprised?” Or, “He was always fragile.” Scripps was left feeling rather a fool, if even the likes of Rudge greeted the news with placid understanding. 

“Oh,” said Aggie. Just “oh,” but it held so much that Scripps was taken aback.

“I’m sorry,” said Rachel. “Life can be so hard.”

“Is he staying somewhere?” Pritha asked. “Can you visit him?”

So Scripps told them what he knew, about the weeks Posner spent at his parents’ house, then about the stay in a place with seafoam walls and a light flickering in the hallway. He didn’t tell them how he felt, imagining Posner with his eyes open in the dark, the light on then off then on, but somehow they knew. Aggie grabbed his hand and held onto it. It felt like the most natural thing in the moment, completely unremarkable, but later in his room, changing out of his damp wool jumper, Scripps realized that now he knew what it was like to hold a woman’s hand.

His essay on Milton was a travesty, and the tutor was right to say so. Diana clearly disagreed. “That awful man,” she said, brushing up against him in the hall. “Never mind. What are you doing now?”

It was Friday, classes done for the week and the weekend stretching out ahead, a terrible mass of unstructured time. Certainly there were essays to be written and books to be read, but the when of it all unsettled Scripps like it never had before. “I don’t know,” he told Diana. “What are you doing?”

Diana was going to the pub, where Pritha was waiting at a corner table. When she saw Scripps coming she raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything about it, just asked him what he was drinking. 

Usually, Scripps went to the pub with Dakin—not this pub, but one where the air sometimes reeked of lads-lads-lads. He enjoyed it, the feeling of being out with someone he’d known since childhood, marveling at the constellation of events that kept them together. It was a powerful thing but often exhausting, so when Dakin got a girlfriend Scripps was mostly grateful for the break. 

Having a pint with Pritha and Diana was nothing like having a pint with Dakin. For one thing, Pritha wasn’t a sore loser when it came to darts; she didn’t lose at all. For another, whenever men came over to their table—men like Dakin, with an eye to impress—Diana’s expression clicked over from open to closed in an instant. “No,” she said, and they scattered.

Pritha laughed. “You might try letting them down gently.”

“Why would I do that? They hardly understand a no as it is.”

“They might have had their eye on someone else,” said Pritha.

“Oh?” said Diana. “And what on earth would you do with—”

“Not me,” said Pritha, and Scripps felt his ears redden the instant she nodded in his direction.

“Hmm,” said Diana, considering.

“I don’t think so!” Scripps exclaimed, a far cry from the _Dear me, I believe there’s been a mistake_ he intended.

“Why not?” asked Pritha. “You’re handsome enough. If I went that way—”

“Pritha!” Diana laughed.

“Or if I weren’t spoken for, I should have said.”

Diana looked at Pritha, warm across the table, and amidst the clutter of pint glasses they linked their fingers together.

Several things fell into place. “Well,” said Scripps, “I still don’t think I entered into their calculations but thank you very much for the compliment.”

A comfortable silence fell, and then, “We never asked,” said Diana. “Are you seeing anyone?”

This question. Its inevitability. Scripps supposed it only came up so frequently because it was one of approximately four received questions adults were allowed to ask each other, but the asking always felt a little pointed, and the answering always felt like a dull wound, the shame as inexplicable as the pain. To cover, he often felt the need to equivocate, even when there was no reason to do so. Pritha and Diana were not his parents. 

Nonetheless, he found himself saying, “No, but there was a girl in my staircase I always meant to talk to.”

“Interesting,” said Pritha. “But you never did?”

This was worse, somehow. “No,” said Scripps, then hastily finished his beer. “I’ll get the next round.”

A week later, Scripps was walking back from dinner when he saw Aggie standing a little ahead of him, rummaging in her rucksack. Truth be told, the rucksack caught his eye before Aggie herself did. It was bright orange and covered in pins and patches, some of them barely hanging on. On an outer pocket, right in the center, was a huge pink triangle.

Holding hands on a dark and crowded table was one thing; this was another. Scripps instantly, and so vividly it hurt, thought of Posner singing “Bewitched,” only to an audience of thousands, not just seven boys who forgave everything, always.

Scripps jogged up to Aggie, not quite knowing what to say but sure of the need to say something. She looked up at the last second and saw him. She smiled. “Donald!” she said. “D and P said they’d seen you! I was so envious.”

“Why?”

“Well for one thing,” said Aggie, linking an arm through his, “I heard you’re absolute bollocks at darts.”

“It’s true, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t apologize for trying your best,” said Aggie. Then she said, “Next time, let’s play for money.”

That startled a laugh out of him. “If you say so.”

“Good. That’s settled.” She squeezed his arm. “Now come with me. I have something to show you.”

Scripps followed Aggie to her college and up the winding stair to her room. He’d never been in a girl’s room before. The pink triangle patch likely indicated that this would not be a certain kind of room visit, but, just like holding her hand, the motion itself was enough to wake something in Scripps. _I could kiss her,_ he thought. It didn’t mean that he wanted to kiss her, or that she would want to be kissed by him. Merely, in that moment, that he was someone who could kiss. Applied to Aggie, it was a soft thought, almost friendly, so he was smiling when she unlocked the door and let him in.

“Have a seat,” said Aggie.

There was nowhere to sit but her bed. Scripps sat. The room was a beautiful mess, the dresser exploding with clothes, heaps to books on the floor, an elaborate stereo system beneath the one high window. It was there that Aggie began to dig. 

“I was thinking,” she said. “You said, about your friend. That he likes music. So I thought why not send him some. I can help you.” She straightened, brandishing a cassette. “Maybe something like this?”

She sat beside Scripps and showed him. On the case, in purple ink and impeccable penmanship, someone had made a list of the tape’s contents.

“You have good taste,” said Scripps. 

“Thank you,” said Aggie. “But I didn’t make this. Rachel did.”

“Ah,” said Scripps. “Then she has good taste as well.”

“Yeah,” said Aggie. “It’s a funny story, actually. Well, not funny but… It was first year and I was going out with this guy who…well. He wasn’t a very nice person and he certainly wasn’t nice to me. And we weren’t a very good fit anyway, apart from everything else, because…”

“You’re gay,” said Scripps.

“Yes,” said Aggie. She beamed. “You know, I still have trouble telling people. No problem with them knowing, just the telling is hard. Especially men. No offense.”

“Not at all.”

“I knew you’d understand.” Aggie cocked her head and studied him. “You’re a good listener.”

“That’s what they tell me,” said Scripps, because it was easier than expressing exactly what he felt. Flattered, yes, and deeply. It was the quality he was proudest of, his ability to be there for people, to hear them. But at the same time he sometimes worried, from a place almost beyond articulation, that that was all he was. A friendly ear. A shoulder.

“Anyway,” said Aggie. “One thing led to another and, well, I got in a spot of trouble with food. I mean I had trouble eating. I dumped him and I thought that would be that, back to normal, only it didn’t and I wasn’t eating still and I thought, fuck, I shouldn’t be this way, why am I doing this to myself, I was never one of those girls in school. Not that I would ever blame them. But I blamed myself, you know?”

Scripps could picture it. He had a sister and she was much better now but his heart still hurt. Her little arms. Almost on impulse he reached out and took Aggie’s hand.

“Well,” said Aggie briskly. “Around that time I had met Rachel, and we got on like a house on fire and so of course we were spending all our time together and she’s no fool; she knew what was what. So she just asked me point blank one day, what would make eating easier. I didn’t even think anything could make it easier until she asked, but I told her that it was too loud in the dining hall. Too many people, too much chewing. The next day I met up with her and she gave me a Walkman. And this.” Aggie turned the tape over in her hands like it was something precious. Scripps supposed it was. “That night I wore the Walkman to dinner and listened to music and it was easier. I wasn’t cured, but she…” Aggie squeezed Scripps’ hand, then dropped it. “She showed me what was possible.”

Now Scripps looked again at the cassette, looked at the songs, tried to see whether they spelled out some wish or whether they were just songs and the cassette itself was the wish. “I’m so glad,” said Scripps.

“Me too,” said Aggie. “I don’t think I’ve loved anyone the way I love her.”

“I didn’t realize you two—”

“Oh, we’re not,” said Aggie. “We tried it and it didn’t work. We’re not supposed to be together like that, I think. I think she’s meant to be my family, my sister. Plus,” Aggie winked, “she likes big strong women and I just get so tired.”

Scripps let out a rather undignified snort. There was another snort behind it, and a chuckle, and behind that was a kind of groan. He buried his head in his hands and breathed deeply. Soon, he felt Aggie’s hand moving up and down his back. 

“He’ll be all right,” she said. “He’s doing what he needs to do to get well.”

“I miss him,” said Scripps, to his hands. He never said things like this. He only wrote them down, and rarely even then, not when the enormity of the truth was too big and fast moving for his pen to capture. 

“He’s lucky to have you as a friend,” said Aggie.

Scripps sat up. He wondered if he looked a little wild-eyed. He felt wild-eyed. The afternoon was like a dream. Here, tucked away in Aggie’s tiny room high above everything it felt possible to say, “I think I miss him as more than a friend.”

Aggie squeaked, then clasped her hands over her mouth. 

“But I don’t…” Scripps began. “I haven’t…” He stopped. Squared his shoulders. “What would you say I am?”

Aggie frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re a lesbian,” said Scripps. “What am I?”

Aggie’s face fell. He thought for a moment that he’d offended her somehow, but then she said, “Oh, darling, that’s not something I can tell you.”

He hadn’t expected anything else, but it still landed like a blow. “Sure,” he said. “Of course.”

There was silence in the room. Down the hall, a door slammed. Aggie said, “Let’s pick out some songs for him.”

When he ran into Rachel, some days later, it felt inevitable, like the arrival of spring. She was coming out of Blackwell’s with a sheaf of paper and they very nearly collided. Some papers shook loose and he dove into the street for him, surfacing to read, “Lesbian and Gay Mixer.”

“Want to come?”

He handed Rachel the rest of the fliers. “Is it only—I mean, I’m not a lesbian and I don’t know…”

“You’d be welcome,” said Rachel. “Come.”

And so he did. He took a drink and grabbed the wall and watched. Rachel draped on a woman’s lap. Aggie wore combat boots and a slip. Pritha and Diana kissed in the corner. There were men there, too, men who looked at Scripps as though he were an interloper or a soufflé. Scripps smiled back in a way that he hoped conveyed _don’t give me a second thought_ and actively missed Posner. 

He hadn’t heard from him since he sent the tape, which wasn’t unusual; Posner was an abysmal correspondent under the best of circumstances. Still, it felt a bit as though Scripps had stretched out his hand and Posner had failed to clasp it. 

“Having fun?” Rachel was there, bearing punch. She settled beside him.

Scripps took a punch and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Looking for your people,” Rachel said without hesitation. 

She hardly knew him. “I have my people,” said Scripps.

“Good,” said Rachel. “Then maybe you’re looking for yourself.”

 _No,_ Scripps thought, _I’m here because this is where Posner should be. He should be here, and he’s not, and I can’t be with him, so here I am._ He didn’t say any of that. Instead, he heard himself let out a gasp, quick and light, like air escaping a balloon.

“Tell me about yourself,” said Rachel.

And because no one had ever asked him to in as many words, Scripps told her.

He got back to his room late, drunk, happy, his stomach churning with the anxiety that always followed self-expression, his mind clear.

He nearly slipped on a piece of paper just inside the door, which resolved itself under scrutiny into an envelope with a note from his neighbor attached: “Got this by accident.” He ripped the note off. It was a letter from Posner.

_Dear Scripps,_

_How did you know? By this I mean, how did you know exactly the music I needed right now? I also mean: how did you know how much I’ve been missing you? I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always known me best, of everyone. You say you were surprised when I left but that’s probably why. You know the part of me who still loves music, and mail, even when I don’t much fancy life._

_They let me have visitors. I haven’t wanted them before now but please come. I’ve been listening to these songs every day. I think I would like it if we listened together._

_Yours,  
Posner_

Scripps had never played tennis before, so Pritha taught him, swearing good humoredly at him when he missed. Meanwhile, Aggie took him to see Love and Rockets perform in a sweaty hall. They yelled along until they were hoarse and then they stood together under a single bulb in the loo so Aggie could fix her makeup. They did kiss then, laughing, until Aggie said, “No, I’m sorry, too much stubble,” and Scripps said, “Here I was thinking just the right amount,” and she mimed strangling him to the amusement of the woman snorting coke off the sink next to them.

Diana came to Scripps’ room with all manner of snack food and they revised together, stopping occasionally to gossip about the rotating cast of women Rachel was seeing.

And one night, when Scripps was out at the pub with Dakin, Rachel walked in. She searched the room, clearly looking for someone.

“Look at her,” Dakin marveled.

“You’re not her type,” Scripps said mildly.

“We’ll see about that,” said Dakin, but before he could do anything, Rachel had noticed Scripps and slid through the crush to get to them.

“Bloody hell. It’s mad in here. You haven’t happened to see Pamela, have you?”

Scripps’ Rolodex was only so large. “Who’s Pamela?”

“Blonde. Mullet. You sat beside her at the last group meeting.”

“Who’s Pamela when she’s at home?” asked Dakin, completely at a loss. It wasn’t often that he found himself the odd man out. “And what’s this group?”

For a moment, Scripps thought he might lie. Come up with some cover. But this was Dakin. They’d known each other since they were five. “It’s the gay and lesbian society,” Scripps said. “Meets on Mondays.”

Dakin looked momentarily stunned. Then his expression cleared. “Mate, that was a good one. Seriously. You had me.”

“He’s not kidding,” said Rachel, stony-faced. “We do meet on Mondays.”

“But,” said Dakin. He looked at Scripps, almost pleading. Scripps felt a brief burst of sympathy, because it couldn’t have been easy, even with all Dakin’s self-assuredness, to look Scripps in the eye in the aftermath of Irwin and maintain that it would have happened, it would have happened.

“Yeah,” said Scripps softly, not sure that Dakin had the right end of the stick, not entirely, but figuring he could nevertheless give him something close to honestly.

“You’re not a lesbian, I suppose,” said Dakin.

“He’s not,” said Rachel before Scripps could so much as open his mouth. “But we’re his people.”

And, Scripps would later reflect, that was the exact moment. In a sticky pub, Rachel said, “his people,” and God said, “Yes,” and Scripps leaned on Dakin’s arm, beyond thankful for his life.


End file.
